News & Events

George Hani Discusses Best Practices for Audit Files in State Income Tax Monitor

"Best Practices for Creating and Maintaining Audit Files"

State Income Tax Monitor

08.31.10George Hani makes recommendations for creating and maintaining effective income tax audit files. "Audits are very factual processes," noted Hani. “You as the taxpayer should be the master of factual information. You should be able to put yourself in the position to tell the story that positions your issue to be looked at most favorably as possible from a tax perspective." Putting that role into practical context, a tax staff should, in advance of an audit, "organize [relevant] documents on an issue-by-issue or state-by-state basis." It also is important to devise a system for tracking and identifying the source of tax position documents.